So how do you know if you horse has a balanced diet?

pootler said:
Get your vet to do a full blood panel. If you have a free call out day even better. For £60 you can work from a factual basis rather than guess work.
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Where do you get a full mineral panel from for that money? I pay £10 per mineral after paying for the blood sample.

Also, my vets tell me that there are no accepted figures for minerals in horses blood, so they use cow ones. And I can confirm what Ester says, that horses can look just fine and dandy and be high in iron, manganese and selenium and low in copper.

I wouldn't trust a feed company to tell me how to feed my horses further than I could pick the rep up and throw them.
 
Petalpoos said:
Just a thought, but how much time do you spend working out the exact nutritional demands for yourself and your family?
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Well, precisely.

Look, unless you are Aidan O'Brien or a 5* eventer, your horses are really not going to need rocket scientist levels of feed analysis to stay perfectly happy, healthy and well covered. In fact many horses are already too fat and need less, not more, "nutrition".

Feed companies cultivate the supposed complexity of feeding horses (how hard can it be? They eat grass, FGS...) and then prey on your insecurities by supplying "needs". If your horse is poor, with a dull coat, splitting hooves, etc. then obviously it needs its feed addressed. Feeding stuff "just in case" is a bit mad, really. Nice for the feed merchants though :-)
 
Cortez said:
Well, precisely.

Look, unless you are Aidan O'Brien or a 5* eventer, your horses are really not going to need rocket scientist levels of feed analysis to stay perfectly happy, healthy and well covered. In fact many horses are already too fat and need less, not more, "nutrition".

Feed companies cultivate the supposed complexity of feeding horses (how hard can it be? They eat grass, FGS...) and then prey on your insecurities by supplying "needs". If your horse is poor, with a dull coat, splitting hooves, etc. then obviously it needs its feed addressed. Feeding stuff "just in case" is a bit mad, really. Nice for the feed merchants though :-)
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My thoughts entirely, well said.
 
Cortez said:
Feed companies cultivate the supposed complexity of feeding horses (how hard can it be? They eat grass, FGS...) and then prey on your insecurities by supplying "needs". If your horse is poor, with a dull coat, splitting hooves, etc. then obviously it needs its feed addressed. Feeding stuff "just in case" is a bit mad, really. Nice for the feed merchants though :-)
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But what about those people who aren't reacting to being preyed on by the feed companies, they've done the working out themselves and sacked most of the feed companies offerings off where do we fit in? I don't feel preyed upon just that I have used the data and independent research available to me to make the best decisions for my horse, the same as I do for the rest of his wellbeing as he is my responsibility.
 
I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, I despise food companies that peddle molassed mixes and unnecessary balancers with iron in them.

On the other, since I balanced out the iron and manganese in my water/grazing I've never had a case of mud fever and get an instant cure in any horse that arrives with it. And I've not had a footie barefoot horse since that and feeding yeast either. I do wonder just how many horses are laminitic due to low copper caused by excess iron that is prevalent in UK grazing.
 
Petalpoos said:
Just a thought, but how much time do you spend working out the exact nutritional demands for yourself and your family?
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Need a Like button for this :)

I don't have all year grazing so mine are out 24/7 summer and in in winter with daily turnout - there is rough grass on the turnout but it is roughage with little to no nutritional value.

In summer they get grass. In winter they get hay/haylage with a very small amount of 'hard' feed (some soaked grass nuts with a bit of chop) and that is more of a ritual than a 'need'.

If they looked poor or dull I would up the hard feed or give them something different :)
 
ester said:
But what about those people who aren't reacting to being preyed on by the feed companies, they've done the working out themselves and sacked most of the feed companies offerings off where do we fit in? I don't feel preyed upon just that I have used the data and independent research available to me to make the best decisions for my horse, the same as I do for the rest of his wellbeing as he is my responsibility.
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If I'm not mistaken, though, (and I know that I could be), your horse has an identified health issue and he is an older horse, so it makes sense to optimise his feed and tailor it to his specific needs. It doesn't make sense to spend a fortune on 'balancers' marketed by the feed companies, or vit & min supplements to feed to a healthy horse which is in its prime. The feed companies target relatively inexperienced single-horse owners to encourage/guilt trip them into buying completely unnecessary supplements.
 
I did the maths based on forage analysis and the NRC guidelines (which were more current then) 6 years ago when he was 19 and had no issues, they only came up when he was 24. Had he been 12 when I found out about the maths I would still have done it and fed accordingly and will do the same where I can for any future horses. As I said I am always going to be in it for the long haul so why wouldn't I want to optimise nutrition as part of my management for the duration if i can without spending inordinate amounts of money?
 
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One of my ponies is well north of 30, and he is does just fine on grass and hay (barefoot, and hooves like iron). He thinks a 'balancer' is one of the little people who sit on him. :D
 
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